The world can end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, the United Nations said on Tuesday, highlighting global success in rolling out life-saving drugs over the last 15 years.
Since 2000, the number of new HIV cases has dropped by 35 percent -- from 3.1 million to 2 million. AIDS-related deaths have dropped more than 40 percent since 2004 to 1.2 million a year. The drastic decline is attributed in large part to greater accessibility to antiretroviral drugs, community outreach programs and the effective mobilization of advocates worldwide. Investment in HIV/AIDS surged to almost $22 billion in 2015 from less than $5 billion in 2001, according to the report.
"Ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 is ambitious, but realistic, as the history of the past 15 years has shown," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report released at a financing conference in Ethiopia on Tuesday.
UNAIDS set Fast-Track Targets last year which include achieving 90-90-90 by 2020: 90 percent of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status; 90 percent of people who know their HIV-positive status on treatment; and 90 percent of people on treatment with suppressed viral loads. The new targets are set to be 95-95-95 by 2030. According to UN, $31.9 billion will be required to fight the global AIDS the next five years.
Today, there are 58 percent fewer new infections among children than there were in 2000.
UNAIDS is "confident" that that figure will soon reach zero, an outcome that was recently proven possible by Cuba. The World Health Organization deemed it the first country to eliminate the transmission of HIV and syphilis from mother to child.
